What are your philosophical thoughts on paying a subscription to get your work done? The new norm? Lets see what local models can do? The richest bird gets the worm? Lets hear, from the humans that are in here please.
You are paying to get the work done much quicker. You are saving time, if you don't think your time has more value than the cost of AI agent then you should not pay for these tools.
> The new norm?
As long as companies are ok to pay for these tools and they believe that these do provide value, yes this is going to be the new norm.
> Lets see what local models can do?
My hope is that local models become as good as cloud models but the tricky part is all the AI companies would prefer to have big giant cloud models instead of innovating on optimization so that even small models can do good work.
There have always been costs associated with tools, whether in money or time. A lot of businesses have been paying SaaS subscriptions for decades, and support contracts for longer. I don't understand how AI would be any different.
You've always been doing that. Whether it's called "subscription" or not.
The "you" in this case is yourself, your team or your organization.
Your computer / laptop, the software it runs on, the mouse, keyboard, monitor, desk or whatever else you always had to pay = things you pay to do your work.
Even back in the day you had to pay for pen and paper. Consumables = API credit then?
Point being, what's the difference?
Just like you can code without AI you can also code without a chair. You can hold the laptop and try type.
> The new norm?
No
Paying for an IDE, course or fancy tools was paying for complementary additions instead of the core.
Just look at the, often smug, messaging of these companies. Your means of producing economic value are being centralized. The perceived and actual value of software products is being lowered.
Open-source models must win.
I've paid for subscriptions to get work done for years. Educational materials, IDEs, source control tools, debugging tools, etc. I don't think the fact that you're paying for a subscription is the real potential worry here, right? It's more about the effects of using this particular tool.